John Woo to direct Spy Hunter film?

According to an item in the The Hollywood Reporter, John Woo is close to making a deal with Universal Pictures to direct a the Spy Hunter film, which is already tentatively aiming its sights at 2005 with Dwayne Johnson/The Rock attached to star.

The report says that Woo has been in negotiations with UP for some time. If he gets the gig, it'll be Woo's second big videogame-based film adaptation deal in as many months. Back at the start of April, word got out that the veteran filmmaker snagged the rights to Metroid, and also has the option of directing the silver screen version.

Should he helm the Spy Hunter film, at least we can be vaguely confident that it'll be suitably weighted in favour of the vehicular action - with experimental supercars loaded with enough gadgets to outdo every Bond car rolled into one - rather than focusing on the plight of The Rock's character Alec Sects, an ex-fighter pilot recruited to join secret government unit "the Spy Hunters". Which frankly doesn't sound very plausible.

Interestingly, Midway is reportedly planning to make a game based on the film based on the game, which would be an interesting move - although not altogether unprecedented. Back when Kylie and co. were high-kicking their own careers in the face in the unfortunate Street Fighter movie, Capcom made a digitised beat-'em-up to go alongside it. We only hope both film and game fare a little better in this case.